As the U.S. drew close to joining World War II in 1941, a few military officers—notably Lt. Col. John Weckerling and Capt. Kai Rasmussen—realized that there would be a need for Japanese translators in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the military could only find a few soldiers already proficient in Japanese, so Weckerling and Rasmussen began to push for the creation of a language school to intensively train people to be military linguists.

Weckerling and Rasmussen put their jobs on the line and got the 4th Army Intelligence School opened in San Francisco on November 1, 1941, where John Aiso, Shigeya Kihara, Akira Oshida, and Tetsuo Imagawa taught fifty-eight Nisei and two Caucasians. A few months later President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that forced the internment or relocation of Japanese families. Because the school was housing Nisei, it had to move or lose nearly all of its students. After a number of other mid-western states declined, Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota agreed to take in the school, so it moved to Camp Savage and changed its name to the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS).

Within a couple of years, the school outgrew itself and moved again, this time to Fort Snelling in St. Paul. Eventually MISLS graduated more than 6,000 linguists. Its graduates broke codes, served on the front lines, and even became instructors themselves. Their service in the Pacific theater of World War II was so successful that it prompted Major General Charles Willoughby—General Douglas MacArthur’s Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence—to say, “The Nisei shortened the Pacific War by two years and saved possibly a million American lives and saved probably billions of dollars.”

The Minnesota Historical Society Library has a number of primary and secondary resources about this topic. Check it out in the Minnesota History Topics: Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling.

Bruce Laingen was the senior U.S. diplomat held in Tehran during the Iran Hostage Crisis from November 1979 to January 1981.

He received a M.A. in International Relations from the University of Minnesota. During World War II Laingen served in the U.S. Navy, and in 1949 he joined the U.S. Foreign Service. He served until 1987 at posts in Germany, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He was appointed ambassador to Malta in 1977. Laingen was then sent back to Iran as the U.S. chargé d’affaires, but within months of his arrival the U.S. embassy was overrun by student protesters. He and two other American officials were at the Iranian Foreign Ministry at the time of the assault and were trapped and held there for the next 14 months. After his ordeal, Laingen was awarded the State Department’s Award for Valor along with several other recognitions.

Ambassador Laingen’s papers are at the Minnesota Historical Society. They are a valuable resource for anyone interested in international relations, U.S.-Iran relations, diplomacy, the U.S. Foreign Service, and especially the Iran Hostage Crisis. The papers contain personal and official correspondence and photographs from his entire Foreign Service career, and papers from Laingen’s experience during the Iran hostage crisis. Highlights include appeals written by Laingen to Iranian government officials, letters written to Laingen by children, personal and official correspondence, pages from Laingen’s journal kept during the crisis, solitary confinement writings, and a map of the ministry rooms, drawn by Laingen, where he was kept hostage.

Historians estimate that 12.5 million people crossed the Atlantic from Africa as part of the slave trace. A new, free web database called Voyages might be able to help you find your African ancestors.

Voyages, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, was just launched on December 5, 2008. It has “information on almost 35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students, and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.”

On the website you can:

• Search the Voyages Database: Look for particular voyages in this database of documented slaving expeditions. Create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.
• Examine Estimates of the Slave Trade: Slaves on documented voyages represent four-fifths of the number who were actually transported. Use the interactive estimates page to analyze the full volume and multiple routes of the slave trade.
• Explore the African Names Database: This database identifies over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.

Special features on the site include introductory maps and a timeline/chronology.

Who was Lawrence Taliaferro (pronounced “toll-i-ver”), you ask?

The United States gained control over the upper Mississippi Valley through the Revolutionary War with Great Britain and later the Louisiana Purchase from France. This vast territory, inhabited by fur traders and Indians still loyal to the British in Canada, lay well beyond American settlement. After the War of 1812, the government took physical possession of the valuable Northwest frontier by establishing a chain of Indian agencies and supporting forts from Lake Michigan to the Missouri River. The story of Fort Snelling is the story of the development of the U.S. Northwest.  

Near Fort Snelling, at the St. Peter’s Agency, Major Lawrence Taliaferro mediated disputes between Minnesota’s Dakota (Sioux) and Ojibwe (Chippewa or Anishinabe) Indians. He attempted to ease tensions between both tribes, the fur traders, and their new white neighbors.

Taliaferro presided over the drafting of a treaty in 1837. He brought Dakota leaders to Washington, D.C., and negotiated what he thought were fair terms for Dakota lands east of the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, the United States government was unable to keep up its end of the bargain. The Indians ended up debt-ridden and desperate for their means of survival, and Taliaferro became increasingly critical of the United States’ inability to make good on their promises. In poor health, he resigned his position.

Taliaferro was also, notably, the owner of a slave named Harriet Robinson, who would later marry Dred Scott. It is unknown exactly how Taliaferro came into ownership of Harriet, but what is known is that she worked as a servant to his wife. As Justice of the Peace in the territories, Taliferro would officiate the marriage of Dred and Harriet, a marriage which many historians believe gave additional credence to the Scotts’ claim to freedom.

Lawrence Taliaferro’s papers are in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society Library, as well as other materials, including a painting of Major Taliaferro.

Church Records at the MHS Library - November 18, 2008

Ruth Bauer Anderson will discuss the different church records available at the Minnesota Historical Society. Information will include individual congregations’ records, the WPA records of churches in Minnesota, the Congregational Conference of Minnesota, Episcopal Church materials, church histories and directories, cemeteries, and photographs.

Registration required.

Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Time: 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Location: Fraternal Congress Classroom in the Minnesota History Center

Price:
Minnesota Historical Society members: $8
Non-members: $10

The Minnesota Historical Society library and archives has a lot of military and verterans records. For a good list go to Family History Resources: Military. The page is arranged by type of record—bonus records, enlistment records, draft records, etc.—by war, and by veterans records. These records are mostly Minnesota-specific. A few, such as the Veterans Graves Registration reports, include veterans who served from another state but eventually moved to Minnesota.

Each item has a link into the MHS catalog on MnPALS. Some of these records can be a little difficult to find because you have to wade through so many “hits” in the catalog, so we have made it easy for you to find these.

Records from other states and from the federal government are available in the library on Ancestry.com Library Edition.

Some sites you might want to check out that can be accessed from home for free include:

• Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System
• Nationwide Gravesite Locator
• World War II Army Enlistment Records
• World War II Prisoners of War
• World War II Prisoners of the Japanese
• Korean War Casualty File
• Records of Deceased, Wounded, Ill, or Injured Army Personnel, Including Dependents and Civilian Employees, 1/1/1961 - 12/1981

The first item listed is on the National Park Service website. The second is from the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs. The rest are just a few of the many military-related databases on the National Archives website.

The theme for the upcoming 2009 National History Day competition is “The Individual in History: Actions and Legacies.”

Whether you are looking specifically for a Minnesota individual, or you’ve already picked an individual who just happens to be from Minnesota, you will find a wealth of information in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society library and archives.

If you haven’t already checked it out, look at the Minnesota History Topics for both ideas and for sources. Many individuals are already listed under the category of “Famous Minnesotans,” such as Hubert H. Humphrey, Sister Elizabeth Kenny, and Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.

Other individuals are a bit buried inside other topics, such as Ernest C. Oberholtzer and Sigurd F. Olson in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Controversy history topic. Oberholtzer and Olson were major figures in the creation of the BWCA and the Minnesota Historical Society has the papers of both men.

Oberholtzer’s papers have been microfilmed, which means they are available for you to borrow on Interlibrary Loan and use right in your local library. Your local librarian can help you do that. Also, transcripts of oral histories that were conducted with Mr. Oberholtzer are available on the Internet.

These are just a few ideas. We will be blogging about other individuals in history over the coming weeks.

Among the recently cataloged Andersen Corporation corporate records (ca. 118 cu. ft.) are several boxes of photographs that showcase Andersen windows and homes built with Andersen windows. The bulk of the photographs are 8 x 10, black-and-white prints of suburban homes, built in the post-World War II baby boom era, from locales throughout the United States. House historians will find these photographs a valuable source on the 1950s and 1960s that is seldom documented in such quantity and in such detail in one collection.

Minnesota locales, including some from the lake country (see images 1 and 2) are well documented but photographs of residences, businesses, schools, churches, and hotels from over 30 states are also included.

      
(1) Summer home near Perham, Minnesota

 
(2) Camp Widjiwagan, Ely, 1959

While a number of the photographs are of elegant homes of the social elite, most of the photographs are of fairly typical suburban homes of the middle class as shown in the images 3 and 4.

(3) Home near Flint, Michigan

(4) Home in Scotia, New York

There is an equal mixture of interior shots of kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms, and exterior shots, which of course prominently feature a particular line of Andersen window. The photographs are arranged by type of window (casement, flexivent, gliding, strutwall, etc.) and those photographs with a more exact address are arranged by state. As a result, a researcher can quickly zero in on a particular locale or conduct a more general search.

Also included are the expected plant scenes–some as early as 1916, construction photographs showing the installation of various types of Andersen windows (image 5), and trade show photographs showing the marketing of Andersen windows (image 6).

(5) Construction site near Madison, Wisconsin

(6) Trade show display

From the folks at the Gideon Pond House:

Hope you can join us this Sunday for possibly the largest gathering of authors of Minnesota history we’ve ever had at the Gideon Pond House!  Sounds like we’ll also have beautiful weather for a hike on the trails in Pond Dakota Mission Park …

“Trail of Tears: The Minnesota Dakota Indian Exile Begins”         
Sunday October 26, 2:00 pm
This program will be presented by most of the book’s contributing authors:  Thomas Shaw, Stephen Osman, Alan Woolworth, Mary Bakeman, Curtis Dahlin, Lois Glewwe, Carrie Zeman, Walter Bachman, Corinne Marz, and John LaBatte.  The book is a series of essays that extends from Camp Release following the decisive battle of Wood Lake to the Lower Sioux Agency, with two marches from there:  those that were tried and prisoners to Camp Lincoln in Blue Earth County, and their family members-women, children and elders-who were taken to the internment camp at Fort Snelling.  It includes information on Sibley’s army of 1862, the emotional reaction of the white soldiers assigned to guard the Indians, and what has happened over time.  There will be a special mention of the Gideon Pond House in the presentation.  All the authors have made previous presentations at the Pond House or on our tours and are some of the most renowned historians in the state of Minnesota.  The book published by Prairie Echoes Press will be for sale and the authors will be available for signing.  House tours at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.  Program and tours are free.

The Gideon and Agnes Pond House is located in Pond Dakota Mission Park, 401 East 104th St., Bloomington, between Portland and Nicollet Aves.  For more information contact Mark Morrison at Bloomington Parks and Recreation at 952-563-8693, or after hours call Jay Ludwig at 952-484-0477, or visit our website.

From Immigrant to Citizen: The Naturalization Process in the United States

Citizenship papers can provide a wealth of information about your immigrant ancestors, including birth dates, ports of arrival, last place of residence in the old country and next of kin. Learn about the historical process of naturalization, along with some tips of the trade for doing research in these fascinating records. Presented by Reference Librarian Alison Purgiel.

• Saturday September 13, 10:00-11:30 a.m.
• Cost: $8 for MHS members; $10 for non-members.
• Location: Fraternal Congress Classroom in the Minnesota History Center.
• The class is limited to 30, pre-registration required.
• Register online.